1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic paper feeding apparatus, more specifically, an automatic paper feeding apparatus which is attached to an image forming apparatus such as an electrophotographic copying machine or the like, and which feeds sheets one by one to the image forming portion of the image forming machine.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A conventional automatic paper feeding apparatus for a copying apparatus comprises a paper-feeder roller capable of feeding sheets by its own rotating, touching and pressing the top of the sheets stored on a sheet tray, as well as a sheet handling mechanism positioned at the downstream relative to the paper-feeder roller and having a transport roller and a separation roller touching and pressing the transport roller and capable of rotating in the reverse direction to the paper feeding direction. Further, this sheet-handling mechanism also has a guide plate, which guides the sheets fed through the paper-feeder roller to the nipping portion between the transport roller and the separation roller.
However, since this conventional type automatic paper feeding apparatus has its guide plate secured to a copying apparatus, there is a possibility that when a lot of sheets are fed through the paper-feeder roller, the leading edges of the sheets may be caught and jammed between the transport roller and the guide plate. Additionally, the top end of the guide plate is preferably located closer to the separation roller so as to improve the sheet handling capability. However, because of being independent of the separation roller, there is a difficulty in precisely locating the guide plate closer to the separation roller. In particular, in the case of small-sized apparatus that utilize small-diameter rollers, these problems become more important.